Angie Leigh Monroe is an International Speaker, Strategist and Consultant whose expertise guides people to identify and obliterate obstacles. Her innovate approach will ALIGN you with strategic partnerships, ACTIVATE your purpose and CALIBRATE your potential to encounter even more opportunities.

She a has founded:

Angie Leigh Monroe, Inc which is the parent company for her consulting and speaking business as well as her legacy projects. https://angieleighmonroe.com

D.I.V.A.S. Impact - Which Empowers and Equips a global community of women change-agents making a positive impact in the world we live in.

https://DIVASimpact.com

Veteran DIVAS – Which Empowers and Equips veteran women as they tackle the next big thing in their life.

Angie is a native Texan, Navy veteran and Executive Director with the John Maxwell Team. This year she celebrates 27 years of marriage to her husband Michael who she met while in the Navy, they have 3 children and 2 grandchildren as well as several other bonus kids who call them family!

Episode 199

Donnie Boivin: So I got a buddy Chad King that told me I need to talk to Angie, so we’re finally getting her on the show. I harassed her a little bit and she agreed to come on. Looking forward to this so Chad I owe you one I’ll probably buy you a beer next time I see you. I’m Donnie Boivin and this is Success Champion - Angie Monroe; welcome to the show dear please, please tell us your story.

Angie Monroe: Well thank you for having me, I absolutely love Chad and his wife Shelly. I grew up with them so we knew each other prior to the military. And then he went to the marines and I went to the navy after high school. I think we both were just trying to find our ways. We both had things we were great at in our younger youth, but we still just wanted something that's a little bit more.

And I think I see something in my friend Chad that I resonate with is, he wants to be significant in his journey through life. He is really always out there networking and investing in worthy causes and being a part of the community around him and I love that because that's what I was raised with.

My dad was a police officer in our local town, my mom worked for the government and that's why we joke that I had to go halfway around the world and into the military to find a husband because nobody would marry me with a dad that was a police officer and a mom that worked for the government. So I found a West Virginian hillbilly and CB in the navy and we got married and started our family.

I really came out of the military struggling to find my identity, I was great at being an aircraft mechanic and I loved that but that didn't translate too well with mommy playgroups. Other women just didn't resonate with that. I don't understand why they just can't get along with a girl that's used to throwing wrenches at people because they're talking back to ‘em or that can change a generator in less than 30 minutes on a P3; they just didn't get me.

And I was really struggling with finding that place to belong. I worked for a local church in the Dallas Fort Worth area, I had a woman's pastor come up to me one day and say, “Why aren't you in a life group?” I said because there isn't one that fits my schedule, there isn't one that fits my lifestyle, there just isn't one that's good for me. Then she goes, “Well maybe if you can't find what you’re looking for, others can't find what they're looking for and maybe you just need to create it.”

Donnie Boivin: Well when you give a new veteran a task and you're kind of like hold my beer and watch this, right?

Angie Monroe: Exactly. First off, I told her I didn't like her very much; Second off I don't need another thing on my plate. I was the mom, my husband works 24/7 as an on-call commercial plumber. What he did in the navy translated into his work life but I worked umpteen hours and I was constantly shuffling kids outside of work, there was nothing that fit my lifestyle.

So I started sending out little daily inspirations to my group of girls I then worked with because I could see and I could hear them all feeling some of the same things I was feeling. Maybe not the same specific things but they were all feeling disconnected and not able to connect with women in real life.

So I just started doing little daily inspirations, that little daily inspiration email list grew and grew and grew and grew to where finally I was asked to not to send it from the church anymore because it was crashing the servers. So then I was like what do I do, this was over 10 years ago. I kind of pushed pause for a little bit, “Ok that didn't really go as I expected, how do I get where I want to go?” And I kept seeing Real Housewives of wherever, Girls Behaving Badly; The Bad Girls Club and I'm like I don't relate to any of them.

They're great psychology studies but they're not really great for building long-term sustainable relationships and they're not really people I want to put on an idol. Then I started talking to other women and they’re like, “Yeah, we just don't know how to be good girlfriends anymore. We're too busy with our own lives and consumed with our own lives to be good girlfriends and we get made fun of by the guys because they just see the surface level.“

And I said, “Well, we can't fix what the guys see until we fix what we see.”

Donnie Boivin: True, well said.

Angie Monroe: We really just started talking with a whole bunch of women, I travelled across the country for a year talking with women in all walks of life. Professional and Fortune 500 company women, all the way down to girls that are going from highschool to college and getting their first job and asking what it is they were missing in their lives and that birthed our organisation called DIVAS Impact.

DIVAS Impact stands for: Destined, Inspired, Victorious, Accountable Sister and making a positive impact in the world. Just recently rolled out our Veteran DIVAS Tribe because we realised that our women that have served our country have some special and unique things that have happened to them and working alongside brother's like you... somethings are great and some things are not so great.

Little so-and-so that goes to church with me will not understand the things that I went through.

Donnie Boivin: Or all the things that come out of your mouth (laughs).

Angie Monroe: Right, the random pops in my head that pop out, they don't understand why I was so violent when I was in the military and I'm like it wasn't being violent it was being toe-to-toe to and not backing down, that was a sign of weakness.

Donnie Boivin: I mean at that point you were kind of like being a dude with long hair because you had to.

Angie Monroe: Exactly, that's how you had to be accepted and I was a girl's worst enemy when I was in the military. If a girl wanted to come into our shop and work at our shop I was much harder on them than any of the guys were.

Donnie Boivin: That makes sense. This is fun, you go and do the whole navy thing I'll try not to hold that against you too much

Angie Monroe: That's alright, I know your department of the navy.

Donnie Boivin: Absolutely, the men's department.

Angie Monroe: Men's department, I love that (laughs).

Donnie Boivin: You’re an aircraft mechanic, that's fun. I was a Motor T mechanic when I was in the cooler and you guys had a hell of a lot more fun playing with planes and we getting put on trucks. We just drank a little bit more but you go through that and the transition process, a lot of people in the military do. I love how you started off, I went to the military because I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do when I grow up, right? That just seemed like the next move. But you get out of the military and you are more still in the same spot, now what?

I love the fact that you've gone through that and you figure it out through process of elimination if you will, you're kind of role in life but I also like that somebody kind of said hey, do this and it helped you figure it out. I'm curious if they wouldn't have said hey and you do this, do you think you'd be where you are right now?

Angie Monroe: It would be really interesting to find out if I would, just simply because I'm a strong personality...

Donnie Boivin: Nooo...

(both laugh)

Angie Monroe: ...my girl that manages the office here for me, she even made the comment that's like you intimidate me at times. She's a strong girl, she's an athlete; she went on college to be an athlete she can hold her own but she told me you intimidate me at times. And I realise that. It also take another woman just as strong if not stronger than me to say that to me.

If anybody else had said that to me it would have gone in one ear and out the other but because of the weight that this woman carries with her presence and with her authority. It was going to eat away at me for the rest of my life if I didn't do something, you know. Then I start realising the thing I was looking for was working with women, which created a whole other issue because I didn't like women.

Donnie Boivin: Yeah, as I said.

Angie Monroe: Normally where your greatest calling is, the area where you need the most work in.

(both laugh)

Angie Monroe: That was biggest hurdle right there.

Donnie Boivin: It's funny I do a lot of private coaching and and most of my clientele are women as well and I don't know why, it's just how it worked out and I've had a couple of them say why don't you do this group coaching session.

And I said, “Have you ever put a bunch of alpha women in one room? Yeah, it doesn't usually go very well because it'll take you 4 days to get through the hand pecking order right before everybody gets settled